


He Wore an Hourglass

by alec



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Death, Grief, Healing, Love, M/M, Nameless Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6371692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alec/pseuds/alec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wore an hourglass around his neck. A small one, tiny. Definitely not an actual hour glass, probably not even a full minute. It was tiny and it hung just short of his collarbones, and the small grains of white were always pooled at the bottom, shifting when he’d move but always staying at the bottom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Wore an Hourglass

He wore an hourglass around his neck. A small one, tiny. Definitely not an actual hour glass, probably not even a full minute. It was tiny and it hung just short of his collarbones, and the small grains of white were always pooled at the bottom, shifting when he’d move but always staying at the bottom.

Except for the occasions when I’d look over at him, and he’d have upended the hourglass. It sat so close that the bottom of it would touch the tops of his plush lips. It was awkward and unnatural – it had to feel that way; a chain that short, a pendant that long, it must have been uncomfortable to do that. The first time I saw him do it, I didn’t say anything about it; I was sure he wasn’t even aware he was doing it himself. We were coming back from a club, after all, and he wasn’t exactly fully in control of his mind. I figured it was just an idle thing, something for his hands to play with with his mind reduced.

But I’d keep looking over, over the months we started spending together, and every so often, I’d see him with the hourglass – twenty-five second glass, it had to be – upended and touching against his lips. Sometimes he’d be smiling, sometimes he’d be looking far off into the distance unthinkingly, sometimes he’d be angry or sad. I couldn’t tell what was going on. I asked him one time – one of the times when he was smiling as he was doing it, his eyes closed an a curl to his lips – why he would do that, and I was surprised that he was aware of it; I’d just assumed it was an unconscious habit.

“I like saving time, for us,” he said without opening his eyes. He just continued to smile, and at some point the last grain of sand hit the bottom and the sound of the necklace chain jingling came across softly through the room.

I asked him a few more times, at various intervals, and the answer was always the same. Or, some variation on it. It wasn’t infuriating, not having the answers. It was perplexing. I finally just accepted it as something about him that he did, and it became another one of his quirks that I grew to love about him. “I just want to give us more time.”

In the end, it wasn’t enough time. It came too late for the doctors to do anything but numb the pain, and I sat helpless in the chair as I watched my husband dying in front of my eyes, afraid to blink because it was like grains of sand in an unholy hourglass that were falling far too fast, and was almost empty. When had it been turned over?

And then the last grain fell, and the hourglass was finished.

I don’t remember that day well after that. I didn’t want to make it a memory, and I don’t want to remember it. Doctors rushed in, nurses tried to save him, and eventually I tried to drive home in the darkness of the night, to our house that was no longer ours. And I tried to sleep in our bed that wasn’t ours, in our room that was no longer ours. I couldn’t do it, and I had to sleep on the couch that night as I clung to his laundry, sobbing loudly – painfully – able to smell him all around me, praying to god that I’d wake up and he’d be there with me again.

He wasn’t.

It took a long time to be able to go into our room again, even when I needed things from there. I could only go in if I closed my eyes, or if I ran through it. It felt like walking into an oven, the heat oppressing from all sides and tearing me apart, keeping me from breathing. I’d shut the door after me to keep it locked away. The heat? Or the emotions? Or the memories?

With– with a lot of time, I gained the strength to be able to go back in there again. Into what had once been our room. Each step brought tears to my eyes because while I’d physically been in the room before, this was the first time I was actually entering it since he’d died. I stroked the unmade bed from the night before, sheets still torn astray from the sex and the happy cuddling and the laughter, and I almost bolted from the room. I couldn’t do this.

But there was his hourglass. The tiny little hourglass that he’d always worn around his neck, sitting there on the dresser facing the bed. I hadn’t seen it in months, and I felt a wave of guilt as I realised I hadn’t even thought about it in months. It had been so much about him, and I’d not even bothered to try remembering it.

I approached it with slow steps, staring at it as though it were the first time I’d ever seen it, and when I reached out for it and touched it, it felt new in my hands, something foreign. There were tears streaming down my cheeks accompanied by intermittent sobs as I slowly picked it up, securing the clasp around my neck like I’d done for him so many times. And I picked it up and kissed it, trying to remember him. And I upended it, letting it touch my lips so I could feel the ghost of his kiss.

It was night out; the streetlights were on, flashing intervals over my head. The alcohol was making everything blurry and I was vaguely aware of my head rolling slightly against the window of the passenger side of his car. My body ached from exertion and I wanted nothing but to go back home and fall asleep in our bed.

But I was smiling, because I knew that my boyfriend was driving me home. I’d remembered dancing at the club, his hips against my back, my arm over my shoulder and stroking his neck as he smiled and pressed kisses to my skin. The alcohol (too much alcohol) and the hoarse voices from shouting to be heard. All of it – this was a good night. I looked over at my boyfriend, my eyes bleary and ready for sleep. His eyes were focused on the road, and I could tell that he was sleepy too, but he was smiling, and I knew he was thinking about it too.

This was a good memory.

Then it was sunny. Midday. We were sitting on the beach and I could feel the sand piling up around me as my boyfriend idly pushed sun-warmed sand against my legs, letting it pile up over them. The ocean waves, the seagulls, the kids running around and screaming loudly as they splashed into the water. I felt at ease. I felt happy, for the first time in a long while. It was like my soul was soaring and I was happy and I knew that I was smiling, I could feel it on my face.

This was a good memory.

He was being an absolute dick. There had been no reason for him to get mad at me over staring at the models. They were wearing the clothes that were right beneath them, and they were attractive doing it. There had been no reason to be passive aggressive or to get snippy with me when I asked what was wrong, and storming off when I’d said that one of the models looked really hot in those pants, maybe I should try them on had been ridiculous. He was acting like a jerk, and yet he was doing it because he loved me. He was jealous. He didn’t have a six-pack, or muscles like those guys; he didn’t have what they had to offer. He was angry because he was watching me staring at guys he could never compete with. It wasn’t often that his insecurities hit him anymore.

He didn’t need to be such an ass about it, but I suppose this was a good memory.

No, this was a good memory.

We were sitting on the couch, the sunlight streaming in through the blinds though we’d tried to block it out as best we could. The movie was in the player, the remote in hand, and we were curled up under the blanket. The movie menu had just disappeared, the movie just beginning to cast a bright blue glow over us and the room, when I heard him ask from my side where I lay leaned up against him.

“Why do you do that with your hourglass sometimes?” I knew what he was asking.

“I like saving time, for us,” I replied.

This was a good memory.

Elation. Pure happiness. Joy. Unadulterated joy. Tears streaming down my cheek as I looked down at the ring that he’d slid onto my finger just minutes ago, still disbelieving that it was there. Some restaurant patrons were looking at us with smiles on their faces, but all I could see was his. The smile on his face, the tears as well, and that funny look of mild confusion mixed with amusement mixed with adoration that he’d always give me whenever I had the hourglass pressed to my lips. I let out a short sob and he smiled widely at that, looking like he’d accomplished every goal he’d set out to do – to elicit that small sob of happiness from me. And I was so ready to give him more.

This was a great memory.

Nerves. The nerves were stupid, right? We already knew this was happening, this wasn’t a soap opera; there wouldn’t be any shocking revelations as we stood at the altar. It was just – this was actually happening. To me. This was happening to me. I’d never really thought it would happen, but now I was reciting the words against the brim of the hourglass, the vows I’d practised hundreds of times in front of mirrors, in empty rooms, in the car to and from work. Now it was time for the big show, and yes, I was nervous. But when the doors opened and I saw him already standing at the altar, dressed so beautifully in his tuxedo with all of our friends arrayed behind him, I couldn’t help but smile widely and finish whispering the last word of my vow against the brim of the hourglass.

This was the greatest memory.

The happiness of the picnic that we took after climbing the mountain, him grumbling most of the way up the fields even though this had been his idea. The glass of wine in my hand and our legs stretched out, looped together; it was peace.

This was a good memory.

Waking up in the middle of the night and looking at him sleeping, drool gently falling from his cheek against the pillow. I tried not to laugh too loudly; I didn’t want to wake him.

This was a good memory.

Watching him playing fetch with the dog, the golden retriever too full of energy after being kept inside the past few days as we both worked overtime at our jobs. When the dog tripped over his own legs in the rush to get to the fallen white disk, my husband looked over at me and laughed. I laughed back, and I could feel my eyes crinkle.

This was a good memory.

I collapsed on my knees on the floor of our bedroom, the last grain of sand having fallen from the hourglass. Hundreds – thousands, perhaps – of memories, lived out over the course of what felt like a lifetime, all in the span of a twenty-five second hourglass. Each tiny grain inside a permanent piece of his memories, his being, his experiences and his life with me.

I clasped the hourglass in my hands and I wept, sobbing uncontrollably, unsure what I was feeling. It was sadness, it was loss, and it was all of the joy he ever felt over the years we spent together. It was every happy memory that he’d ever had, put and held together, pockets of time where I could see the world and see our lives together from start to end. I clutched the hourglass like it was my most prized possession, because it was.

I wear an hourglass around my neck now. All the time. Sometimes when I need to, I turn it upside down again and let the grains of sand trickle down. But most of the time I simply kiss it and that’s good enough. And when people look at me funny or ask me why, I simply tell them: “Because my husband liked saving time for me.”


End file.
